A few of our recipes in the past have called for puff pastry, including one of our favorites:beef wellington! We often recommend buying a frozen puff pastry if only because it saves time during the recipe, but why not make your own and freeze it for those times when you need it?
Puff pastry is a dough that when baked comes out flaky and layered generally because of a constant process of folding and rolling, very similar to our croissants. It’s typically a long process, but we’ve actually found a way to save a lot of time by forming the dough in a food processor, and also by rolling it up like a jelly roll. Keep reading below for this great recipe…
Puff Pastry
(makes about 1.5 pounds of dough)
Ingredients
- 2 cups unbleached flour
- 20 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut into 1/2″ pieces. Reserve 4 tablespoons to the side
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 6 tablespoons cold water
Directions
- Place flour in the workbowl of a food processor. Add 4 tablespoons butter and pulse until the butter is absorbed (about 10-12 1-second pulses).
- Add the remaining butter then pulse once or twice. Dissolve the salt in water and add to the flour mixture. Pulse another 3 or 4 times until the dough starts to form a rough ball. Do not over-process. If the dough is too try, add a teaspoon of water at a time and pulse again.
- Turn the dough out onto a floured workspace and shape the dough into a rectangle. Lay out a long sheet of plastic wrap (at least 12″X18″), flour the plastic wrap, and place the dough on top. Lightly flour the top of the dough and cover with another sheet of plastic wrap. Press the dough with a rolling pin t flatten, then roll back and forth several times to make a 12″X18″ rectangle of tough.
- Peel away the plastic wrap and invert the dough onto the floured workspace with the long side facing you. Peel away the second piece of wrap. Fold the top third of the dough down and the bottom third up to make a 4″X18″ rectangle. Roll the dough up from one end to the other. Press the dough down into a square, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 1 hour or until firm.
Recipe adapted fromFood Network